Tony Kanaan: “Obviously we’d like to be on the pole”

Tony Kanaan felt slightly disappointed that an electrical issue during the Fast Six shoot-out at Road America on Saturday cost him a genuine shot at his first pole position of the Verizon IndyCar Series season.

The veteran Brazilian was still able to recover and put in a good lap to claim third place on the grid, but the Chip Ganassi Racing driver felt it could have been possible for better had it not been for the technical issue.

“We’ve done really well here all weekend until the Firestone Fast 6,” said Kanaan. “We left the pits after sitting with the rest of the field and waiting to go out and almost immediately my steering wheel just completely froze.

“We were trying to figure out what we needed to do, but because we didn’t go out right away we were really running out of time. That’s the price you pay when you run those strategies and then run into issues like those.

“We finally got it figured out when I was in Turn 12 on my out lap, but at that point I could only get in one more lap. Thankfully we were able to get the No. 10 NTT Data Chevrolet up to third.

“Obviously we’d like to be on the pole, but with only having one full lap out and that electrical issue I’m happy with where we were able to qualify.”